Bygone Muncie: Local '49ers' were among the many seeking gold in California

In late May of 1850, the bloated and badly decomposed bodies of James Russey and Daniel Woods washed up on the Bear River bank in California’s Sierra Nevada Mountains. Upon examining the bodies, fellow miners determined that both men had been shot with arrows and scalped.

Russey and Woods had been trespassing on Maidu Native American land that spring in search of gold. Russey, a resident of Muncie, and Woods, of Centerville, had traveled with several dozen Delaware County citizens in 1849 to seek fortune in the California Gold Rush.

For a year prior to their departure, reports trickled in from the new territory that miners had discovered the precious metal in and around the Bear River Basin. As news spread east, thousands flocked to the Pacific coast in hopes of sharing in the discovery. On July 13, 1849, David Gharkey wrote in his diary that in Muncie, “California fever supersedes cholera.” Three weeks later Frederick Putnam wrote that “California fever raging strong-little else doing.” By fall of 1849, those caught with the ‘fever’ traveled west. Gharkey wrote that one group left in October and Putnam recorded another leaving in December.

Some went overland, but others took a faster route by sea. This course required a journey down the Mississippi to New Orleans, then a steamship ride to the Panama Isthmus, which was crossed by foot. At the Pacific Ocean, goldseekers boarded another steamship for the 17-day journey to San Francisco Bay.

The men from Delaware County were among the 90,000 49ers that had traveled to California that year. Most of the goldseekers made modest profits, while others found work in the associated economic boom. Jacob Wysor, for instance, returned to Muncie in 1852 with $10,000 (about $300K today) made mostly from cattle ranching.

California was a new U.S. territory, carved in 1848 from the conquered Mexican province of Alta California after the Mexican-American War. The northern part of the territory, especially around the Bear, Yuba and Feather rivers, was in control of Native nations who didn’t recognize the American territorial government, just as they hadn’t with the Spanish and Mexican.

Thousands were drawn to California during the 1949 Gold Rush.(Photo11: Photo provided)

As goldseekers poured into these areas, violent conflict erupted all over northern California. Natives saw the 49ers as intruders on ancestral land. No one knows for sure, but it’s likely that California’s Native population went from 150,000 in 1848 to 50,000 in 1855. The decline was a result of disease for which the indigenous groups had no immunities, starvation due to the 49ers depleting game, and murder. The historian Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz writes that “gold seekers from all over the world brought death, torture, rape, starvation and disease to the Indigenous peoples whose ancestral territories included the sought-after goldfields north and east of San Francisco.”

Most of Delaware County’s 49ers returned home within a few years and, in the words of Delaware County historian G.W.H. Kemper, did so “enriched by strange experiences if not by gold.”

One forty-niner, Thompson Walling, took 35 years to return to Muncie. After arriving in California, Walling didn’t find much gold and sought fortune elsewhere. In 1852 he stopped writing letters home to his wife Susannah. She figured that he had either abandoned her, or had died like Russey and Woods. Just to be sure, she sued him for divorce (and won) in 1857. She remarried twice, first to Horatio Wilcoxen and then to Jeremiah Veach, both of whom died in accidents.

Volney Willson, from whom Walling had borrowed $500 prior to leaving, suspected that his old friend was still alive. He began canvassing postmasters on the western frontier in hopes of finding someone who knew of Walling’s fate. In 1884, one of Willson’s letters reached the Weatherby, Oregon post office, where Thompson Walling was working as an assistant postmaster! He actually opened Willson’s letter, recognizing the name of his friend.

Walling decided to return home that summer to visit Susannah, his grown children, and old friends. The newspapers tell us that “the wife of ‘49 welcomed her recreant husband and that a portion, at least, of the old love was awakened” and “that a remarriage will close this romantic reunion.” I’m not convinced this happened, as Susannah is buried at Beech Grove Cemetery as Susannah Veech, with nary a Thompson Walling to be found.

Delaware County Historical Society(Photo11: Provided)

Chris Flook is the president of the Delaware County Historical Society and is the author of "Native Americans of East-Central Indiana." For more information about the Delaware County Historical Society, visit delawarecountyhistory.org.